Conservatives Are Perpetuating Dangerous Tropes About Patients Who Need Later Abortions

Leading conservative figures have used legislation proposed in Virginia and passed in New York to spread lies about abortion.

Democrat Kathy Tran, of Virginia’s House of Delegates, introduced and testified in favor of HB 2491. All Virginia’s bill would do is end the burdensome 24-hour waiting period, remove the state-mandated ultrasound law, and require one doctor—instead of three—to approve a request for third-trimester abortions. Why VA Matters 2017 / YouTube

As an OB-GYN, an abortion provider, and a researcher who studies abortion and contraception, the work I do is fundamentally rooted in medical evidence and science. That’s why I’ve been so frustrated to see a conversation about abortion dominated by ideologically driven misinformation rather than facts unfold over the last week.

Leading conservative figures have used legislation proposed in Virginia and passed in New York to spread lies about abortion. In fact, all Virginia’s bill would do is end the burdensome 24-hour waiting period, remove the state-mandated ultrasound law, and require one doctor—instead of three—to approve a request for third-trimester abortions. The bill also says the doctor approving the request would no longer need to certify that the harm to the patient’s health would be “substantial and irremediable.” In New York, the law simply removes abortion from the criminal code, codifies Roe v. Wade, and allows patients who need later abortions to get care in their home state rather than travel across the country.

But conservatives have perpetuated dangerous, malicious tropes about patients who seek abortions later in pregnancy and the doctors who provide them—all to advance a political agenda.

One popular talking point from anti-abortion activists, echoed by The View co-host Meghan McCainamong others, is that the United States is one of a handful of countries allowing abortion after 20 weeks’ gestation. This is flat-out wrong. In fact, around 65 countries allow abortion at this stage of pregnancy in cases of fetal malformations and anomalies.

McCain is right, in a way, when she portrays the United States as out of step with the rest of the world on abortion policies. But the reasons are different from ones she claims. As my research shows, unlike 78 percent of high-income countries, the United States does not provide public funding for abortion, making us a global outlier in this area. By international standards, the Hyde Amendment—which bans all federal funding of abortion care—is a truly radical and damaging policy, one that disproportionately affects patients of color.

So why do patients seek abortions after 20 weeks? There are many, often intersecting reasons. It is the tragic reality that complications may arise as the pregnancy progresses, some of which may affect the health of the patient or the fetus. And parents may choose to end the pregnancy—a decision that is personal and should not be subject to political interference.

But there’s another factor that exposes exactly why attempts to restrict abortions later in pregnancy for political or ideological reasons are so harmful to patients. Many other countries, including those whose laws about abortions later in pregnancy are more stringent than those in the United States, offer widespread access to early abortion. In contrast, abortion access in the United States largely depends on where you live.

I’ve seen patients who need abortions after 20 weeks because restrictive laws in their state—unnecessary waiting periods, ultrasound mandates, needless and burdensome requirements for providers that cause clinics to close—forced them to delay seeking care. In Texas, after a restrictive law went into effect that led to the closure of half of the state’s abortion clinics, the overall number of abortions dropped—but the number of second- and third-trimester abortions increased, likely because of the delays people faced accessing care earlier in pregnancy.

If conservatives are genuinely opposed to abortions later in pregnancy, they should be doing everything they can to expand access to earlier abortion. Instead, they’re doing the exact opposite; state legislatures across the country are proposing outrageous and unconstitutional bans that could outlaw abortion as early as six weeks into pregnancy, often before patients even know they’re pregnant. If these individuals believe abortion should be illegal entirely—a position dramatically at odds with the views of most people in the United States—they should be truthful about that belief, rather than using patients who need later abortions as a prop to advance their ideology.

Whether we ourselves would have a later abortion is not the question. The question is whether we’re able to show empathy for the patient making that decision. It’s my job as a doctor to support my patients in making the decisions that are best for their situation. When we have this debate, we must center the patients in the conversation, and use evidence-based research and facts to inform policy. I truly hope that Meghan McCain and others fanning the flames of outrage around this issue will take a step back, look at the evidence, and recognize the ways that their rhetoric puts patients and their doctors at risk.

In the meantime, those of us who believe in science should continue to advocate for abortion policies that are grounded in it. That’s the best way forward for patients, providers, and a society that enables its people to live healthy, free, dignified lives.

Like this:

Related

3 Responses to “Conservatives Are Perpetuating Dangerous Tropes About Patients Who Need Later Abortions”

Ok, so since you are a baby killer, please let me ask you this. People like you always defend killing those cute new born babies as an important part of women’s health. So – how does killing said baby AFTER it has been born help the mother’s health. It’s not spreading lies about these new disgusting laws (which by the way when Kermit Gosnell did it only a few years ago, he was pretty much seen as disgusting) It’s more about truth. Please stop blaming conservatives. Most conservatives do understand the actual health part of all of this for the mother which is why they have compromised on this issue and are a little more ok with say a 1st trimester abortion – when needed to actual health reason – not just because a woman doesn’t want to be pregnant anymore. I don’t understand how someone who says she believes in science (liberals need to really stop throwing that phrase around only when they think it suits them) can’t see a beating heart in a mother’s womb and call it a living thing. This new law makes anyone who has a beating heart and 1/2 ounce of common sense vomit.

I know it’s highly unlikely that you’re an adoptive or foster parent, much less a pro bono guardian ad litem, pubic school volunteer, Big Brother, etc., but here’s something you need to consider about the fates of those whom you claim to “rescue,” Ken.

Welcome to the Baby Store,the real-life counterpart to the “Abortion Store” of so-called “pro-lifers”:

THE BABY STORE

This story is not told by “pro-lifers”:

In America, a child is born approximately every nine seconds, about 7 per minute, about 400 per hour, 96,000 per day, 3.5 million every year.

Imagine if you will these newborns coming out of the Baby Store, most of them brought out by a parent (in half the cases, two parents). Every nine seconds, the door opens up and a new baby comes out.

Due to the sheer force of probability, each one of them has a destiny fairly well shaped for it as soon as its mother decides to carry it to term:

•Every eighteen seconds a child is born who for most of his life will barely, if at all, know his biological father
•Every 27 seconds, a baby is born whose parents never intended for him to exist
•Every thirty-six seconds, a baby is born who will not graduate high school
•Every thirty-six seconds, a child is born to a life without health insurance
•Every thirty-six seconds, a baby is born who will live in a family with an alcoholic parent
•Every forty-five seconds a child will be born to live in poverty
•Every sixty-three seconds a child is born who will be left alone at home unsupervised between the ages of five and fourteen
•Every eighty-one seconds a baby is born who will come home after school to an empty house
•Of the ten babies born every minute and a half, four are born to mothers weren’t “elated about their condition.”
•Every minute and a half a baby is born whose family pays more than half of its income for rent- two and a half times the national average
•Every minute and a half a baby will be born to a child
•Every minute and a half, a child is born who will experience lifelong depression
•Every minute and forty-five seconds a child will be born at an extremely low birth weight, at risk for school failure and for a felony conviction
•Every two minutes and twelve seconds, a girl baby will be born whose sexual abuse will begin at about age two and continue until about age 14
•Every three minutes, a girl will be born who will herself become a pregnant teenager
• Every three minutes, a child is born who will live in a household with no parent present
• Every three minutes and 18 seconds a boy will be born to suffer sexual abuse
•Every five minutes a child will be born who will run away from home. Almost every other child will be running away because of intolerable family conditions
•Every six minutes and forty-five seconds a child will be born who will have to receive state custody to protect him from his own parents
•Every twenty-two minutes and 20 seconds a child will be born who will go to jail
•Every hour, a baby will be born to die within the first year of life
• Every hour and fifty minutes, a child will be born to die from a gunshot wound
• Every third hour, a baby will be born severely damaged for life by alcohol while in his mother’s womb

Imagine the work facing a “pro-lifer” who would undertake to rescue the born babies coming from the Baby Store!

It’s so much simpler to cajole, threaten or terrify a woman from going into the “Abortion Store” than it is to commit to rescuing a child from the conditions that might (as is often the case with low-birthweight babies) predispose it to failure in life.

That ‘pro-lifers’ engage in such undemanding work speaks volumes about their problems with emotional insecurity in their approach to personal mortality. Their biggest job is not caring for human life, but to sell society on their heroic role.

In order to overcome their fear of death while handicapped by their minimal resources, “pro-lifers” become heroes by trying to create the price society will specify. They become heroes on the cheap.

RESPONSIBLE Right to Life
… and here’s how a child born every minute and 45 seconds will fail unless YOU help:

PREDISPOSED TO FAIL: THE EXAMPLE OF LOW BIRTH WEIGHT

Just as the trained paramedic while chatting with you can envision your cadaver, people who specialize in child development can evaluate a baby and envision a probable adult outcome. While countless factors enter into a child’s development, some characteristics bespeak a strong likelihood for a given success or failure. One of these characteristics is low birth weight.

It is preventable in large part, since it is very often due to substance or alcohol abuse, smoking or maternal malnutrition.

The presence of those conditions often indicate the influence of still other factors– abuse, family malnutrition, life-threatening environment, and so forth– which harm family life and also the baby, born at low birth weight.

As a result, low birthweight babies are at decided risk for failure. While they are only eighteen percent of the school population, they are fifty percent of the school dropout population. And they are over ninety percent of the 18-24 prison population. As students, they cost approximately sixty percent more to serve in school (in a school system with 10,000 students, this would represent an additional tax burden of $4.8 million per year); as prisoners, they cost between $20,000 and $58,000 a year to incarcerate.

Every minute and forty-five seconds, one of these babies comes through the doors of The Baby Store. But to rescue the baby by correcting those conditions is a time-consuming, costly and lengthy process which demands professional skills and a high level of personal commitment. And has been pointed out, these qualities cannot be found in the average “pro-lifer;” he is “pro-life” precisely because he does not have them.

Thus, it is no surprise that a “pro-lifer” would prefer to choose to bar women from entering The Abortion Store. In fact, he hardly has a choice– with no formal education in caring for human life, few skills and little to give of his time or from his wallet, he is compelled to be “pro-life” or to continue to suffer his condition.

Much as he might say he wants to, he cannot devote himself to rescue born babies, only the “unborn” ones.